Currently, communication in a PC-based environment having Internet connectivity is typically established based on email addresses, medium access control (MAC) addresses and/or Internet protocol (IP) addresses. Many unwanted connections occur with no anonymity or control by the communicating parties.
A user of a personal computer (PC) may receive many unwanted email messages with file attachments because the user's email address is widely distributed or published somewhere. The unwanted or unsolicited messages are generally referred to as spam. Some of the email messages may contain computer viruses that can hurt the user's PC. Many businesses and some individual users set up firewalls to prevent certain types of email messages from getting through, especially those email messages having computer viruses. However, in general, email messages flow across the Internet without any type of authorization or authentication being performed.
A cable service provider (CSP) or a satellite service provider (SSP) may authorize which channels to broadcast and/or should be de-encrypted by a particular user based on the subscription information for that user. In general, a set-top-box in a user's home receives whatever is broadcast to it based on the subscription of the user. A service provider could temporarily override the subscription limits and broadcast certain channels to a user's or subscriber's set-top-box to let the user try those channels. Notwithstanding, in reality, the user essentially has no control of what channels may be broadcast by the service provider and receiver by the user or subscriber.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.